


A Thousand Suns

by LLReid



Category: Bloodbound (Visual Novel)
Genre: F/F, Fluff, Kamilah takes a vacation, Light Smut, Making Out, This is the gayest thing I’ve ever written, Vampire Queens, Vampires
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-07
Updated: 2020-02-07
Packaged: 2021-02-28 07:07:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,951
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22599835
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LLReid/pseuds/LLReid
Summary: A summer rain had left the night clean and sparkling with drops of water, waves soothingly washed against the shoreline and overhead the full moon was high in the sky full of twinkling stars, reflecting in all their captivating silver glory. The Grecian villa they were staying at was far enough away from civilisation that the galaxy could be seen with unparalleled clarity on such a clear night. It glittered on the water in such a way it was almost impossible to tell where the heavens touched the horizon. It felt like they were the only two people in the world, floating in midair as if nothing could ever touch them. They breathed in the pale light and the music, and relished in the moment as it passed through them. It was one of those nights that Kamilah knew she would remember for as long as she drew breath.~~~~~Inspired by ‘Hunger’ by Ross Copperman.
Relationships: Kamilah Sayeed/Anastasia Swann, Kamilah Sayeed/Main Character (Bloodbound)
Comments: 2
Kudos: 47





	A Thousand Suns

For millennia Kamilah had missed the feeling of the sun on her skin. She’d never dare dream of admitting it out loud, despite the fact many a tear had been shed in private over the thought of never again being able to soak up the warmth of the sun’s rays on a mid-summers day. Her life had been an unchanging and never ending midnight for more than two thousand years. By necessity, darkness and midnight was all she’d known since the moment her mortal life had ended. But in the middle of her midnight, the sun had risen, the darkness no longer seemed so cold and dismal. She whose name literally meant ‘resurrection’, she had become the sunshine of the ancient vampire’s life.

Kamilah couldn’t help but smile as she glanced at the younger vampire nestled against her side. One look and she couldn’t catch her breath. She was on fire like a thousand suns, and she couldn’t have put it out even if she had wanted to. Anastasia’s red hair floated gracefully in the salty sea breeze, her striking blue eyes sparkling so much that they put the copious Grecian stars overhead to shame. Her beloved Bloodkeeper was at peace on the private beach that lined the property that had once belonged to Elias, focused on the music that was playing through the headphones they were sharing and completely lost to her own private thoughts. Looking at her, no one would’ve believed that this young woman who’d seen barely more than two decades of life had changed so much in the world already, no one would’ve believed that she was quite possibly the most powerful being in the world. A witch, claimed the Vampires who didn’t quite understand her power. A goddess, claimed those who sought comfort in explaining the unexplainable. Regardless of what one chose to see Anastasia as, one thing was clear to all, she was the one who had shown each and every one of them that real darkness was far more than a mere lack of light. She who was equally loved and envied. She who — even as a mere mortal — had never doubted that she could change things. Stop the universe. Undo what had been done long before she had been born at the very end of 1997. She was such a beautiful creature.

Anastasia was the one person Kamilah had allowed to see inside her ancient heart. All the cracks and broken parts, the shadow and the light. With her she knew there was no reason to hide. So much in her life had changed since she’d looked up that fateful September day two years prior and locked eyes with Adrian’s assistant, so much so that her life bore almost no similarities to the lonely way she’d existed for a century between putting Gaius down and meeting Anastasia. Thankfully, she now knew that the more things change, the more they actually stay different. She no longer felt a need to continually punish herself for every transgression committed in her more than two thousand years of life, as she had learned that not even she could control every single thing that happened to her, all she could truly control was her perspective and her actions. She had chosen who she wanted to be and worked every single day to be that woman — and for the first time since her childhood, she actually liked herself.

She sighed, happily, and twirled a long strand of flame coloured hair around her fingers. She didn’t even try to hide the smile on her face. The art of really living made her unspeakably happy and she saw no reason to attempt to conceal that fact from the love of her life. 

A summer rain had left the night clean and sparkling with drops of water, waves soothingly washed against the shoreline and overhead the full moon was high in the sky full of twinkling stars, reflecting in all their captivating silver glory. The Grecian villa they were staying at was far enough away from civilisation that the galaxy could be seen with unparalleled clarity on such a clear night. It glittered on the water in such a way it was almost impossible to tell where the heavens touched the horizon. It felt like they were the only two people in the world, floating in midair as if nothing could ever touch them. They breathed in the pale light and the music, and relished in the moment as it passed through them. It was one of those nights that Kamilah knew she would remember for as long as she drew breath — she was old enough to know that no matter how long a person exists, those special memories were precious. They were points in time that even time itself couldn’t touch or erase. Suffering could distort backwards glances, but even to suffering, some memories were so precious that they would yield absolutely nothing of their splendour and beauty. Instead they would remain as hard and sparkling as the most rare and precious gemstones.

“What’re you thinking about?,” Anastasia asked. 

“I wish I could freeze this moment and live in it forever. I don’t think I’ve ever been this happy...not since the earliest days of my mortal life before I’d become acquainted with loss,” she confessed. Kamilah’s eyes fluttered closed as she rested her brow against hers, holding her so close that they felt more like one being than two. For several long moments they remained pressed together, and she covered her hair with small sacred kisses, her perfume electrifying her with memories. 

For so long she’d doubted that she was made for peace at all. She’d doubted that she and Anastasia would get the calmness that came after the series of cataclysmic storms their relationship had managed to bloom in the eye of. Yet in the eye of every storm Kamilah had learned that it truly was better to trust and face betrayal than to remain sceptical of everything and everybody. Anastasia’s open and un-jaded heart was a gift that she didn’t feel quite worthy of at times, but continued to cherish like it was the most fragile treasure in the world, nonetheless.

In answer, Anastasia took Kamilah’s lips on hers. Kamilah’s healing heart fluttered and she pressed her lips hard against hers. With each slow kiss she felt like she could see into her mind, into her soul. She saw all of the struggles they’d gone through around the time Anastasia had turned...saw her feeling alienated and hurt and frightened. She saw her lying to everyone to prevent them from worrying about her. With every kiss she made her see, made her feel every emotion, every dream she had of her, every ounce of her wanting and her need. Her all-consuming, life-affirming love for her. Anastasia kissed her back, so greedily and hungrily, as if she never wanted to stop kissing her at all. To feel her heart against hers, the two of them intertwined together, her hands in thick ginger hair, then down the small of her back, she felt complete with the overwhelming emotion that engulfed the two of them.

“It feels good to really live, doesn’t it?,” the redhead whispered, breathlessly.

She hummed in agreement. “For most of my life time didn’t mean much to me, it never really does for those of us with too much of it. I lived like a woman who wanted to die but who had no courage to do it herself. When you can live forever what do you live for? It took a while to figure it out but now...now every breath I take feels like a gift.”

It was a terribly painful and sickening truth that suffering had deepened Kamilah. Her life experiences had given a greater lustre to her colours. The things she’d seen had given a richer and deeper resonance to her words. For a while suffering had almost completely destroyed her, and it had taken every ounce of strength she had in her to crawl away from the brink before it could burn away what little optimism and spirit she had managed to hold onto.

“That’s because it is,” Anastasia smiled. “Life is precious and we shouldn’t waste a single second of it.”

Kamilah chuckled, quietly. How fitting that the girl who’d come along at the most unexpected moment and remind her how it felt to hold respect for simple and indispensable things would have a name that literally meant ‘resurrection’. As that was exactly what she’d done in every way it was possible for one to live up to such a beautiful and meaningful name. Not only had she risen from the grave four days after dying, but she’d breathed a new lease of life into Kamilah and the Vampire community at large. She had made her acknowledge that no darkness had ever truly been deep enough to extinguish her personal knowledge of love and goodness and light. And all around her in the world she could see evidence of it. This girl in her arms, she was everything. She was absolutely everything that Kamilah had never dared dream that she might one day come to find. She was the right person. Kamilah’s person. She had become her confidante, someone with whom she could share thoughts she could never have voiced in the past, and exchange, she trusted her with hers. The one who felt so right that it made her see that no one in her past had ever truly mattered to her at all, who made the millennia of waiting and searching for the home for her heart seem worth it.

Before her, Kamilah’s life had been a lot like a foggy and moonless night in the depths of winter. She’d been a very dark and twisted person, there had been a handful of stars and moments of light that managed to break the fog, but none had lit the sky. Then Anastasia had crashed into her life like an asteroid falling to the Earth, and she had set the sky ablaze with warmth and colours. Her shining light reminded her that even in the darkness and the cold beauty and brilliancy remained. One moment the world was as it had always been. The next, it was something entirely different. Something it had never been before. 

“Even as a mortal I was the furthest thing from religious but I believe that whatever gods are watching sent you to save me,” she whispered. “The amount of foreshadowing in our very first conversation about the scarab only proves that to be true, I think. Your name means resurrection and the very first thing we spoke of symbolises rebirth instead of destruction — the promise that life can always go on and the heart can heal, no matter how painful the loss...that things can always be well again.”

“So I’m your scarab is what you’re saying?,” Anastasia smirked.

Kamilah huffed in amusement and used the ends of the long strand of ginger hair entwined around her fingers to tickle Anastasia’s nose. The younger woman giggled and crinkled her nose at the attention, which only spurred Kamilah on. She’d thought she’d known what beauty was in women; but she’d surpassed all the language Kamilah had amassed for it. Her laughter sounded perfect. Her laughter alone seemed to flow in a violent riff and was effortlessly melodic. She really was quite adorable — though she would never admit it, for if she did she was quite certain she would never hear the end of it.

“Indeed. That seems to be what I’m getting at.” She sighed, happily, and for a moment focused on the intimately familiar sound of her heart beating so close to her own. The sound of Anastasia’s heart beating had become the most significant sound in the world to Kamilah. The harmless congenital murmur that hadn’t faded when she’d turned made it sound different from everyone else’s, so much so that Kamilah could pick the sound up in the most crowded parts of New York City and focus on it. She continued, “I realise for the first time since losing my brother how comforting the presence of another person can be...and just how lonely I felt for so long. I want to spend every possible minute of the rest of my life with you.”

Anastasia beamed at her and briefly pressed her forehead against Kamilah’s temple. When she leaned back her smile softened, just ever so slightly. She gave her a smile that seemed to genuinely sweet and full of affection with just the right touch of timidness that the most unexpected warmth rushed through her entire body. Her heart fluttered that way frequently when they were together but each and every time it happened it continued to catch her off-guard, presumably because she’d never felt that feeling at all before they’d met...not even once.

“Even when I didn't know anything about where I was headed or what I was supposed to be doing with myself or how my blood made me different from everyone else, you’ve always been my guiding light. Everything in both of our lives has lead us here, to this moment, to each other. Everything, even the bad stuff and the hard times.”

“Stay with me?,” she whispered. She tilted her forehead down to rest against hers and Anastasia pulled her in closer. Her smooth porcelain skin, her whole being somehow radiated heat, and Kamilah closed her eyes to bask in her warmth. She breathed in deeply the scent of lavender perfume and sex and salty sea air and expensive red wine lingering on her lover’s lips. She didn’t recoil at the intimacy and the vulnerability that came with being so close, instead she revelled in the safety she felt all the way down to her bones. It was as if when she stared into her big blue eyes, everything else but that cosmically lit beach on the edge of the world faded away. There was nothing but the soothing roar of the waves and starlight and their hearts beating in sync.

Anastasia smiled at her as if she'd be happy to lay there in her arms and gaze at her forever. It was only after those dreadful four days of thinking that she had died in her arms that she could truly appreciate that smile, the real Anastasia. Perhaps even more than she would’ve if she’d truly remained dead. It was during the four long days of grieving that pain had made itself known to Kamilah like never before, despite the fact she knew the full scale and force of the absurdity of fate and nature more deeply than any other would ever be able to bare knowing it. She couldn’t even tell Anastasia about it, as it was impossible to convey an understanding of it through language — it must be known, and that, Kamilah would not wish upon anyone in the world. She took great comfort in her kind heart, the constant steadiness, the general warmth that always seemed to have a certain sort of heat behind it that only Kamilah was supposed to pick up on. Outside of Lysimachus, Adrian, Lily, and Jax, Kamilah couldn’t think of anyone else who loved her so unconditionally. No other lover had ever loved her for who she was and not what she was.

“Always.”

“Promise?”

“I promise, Kami. We won't lose each other. No matter what happens, I will always find you again.”

For so long Kamilah had believed that love was a weakness. A weakness that she wouldn’t allow herself to indulge in after the chaos her relationship with Gaius had caused — she hadn’t believed that she was deserving of such a connection. But her relationship with Anastasia had taught her that the glorious sort of weakness that came from being head over heels in love with another was actually a strength of a kind. Every fibre of her being tingled with love and desire and remorse and forgiveness. Anastasia...the love of her long life, her sweet thing, her entire heart and soul. When their lips met and their tongues danced, it was like they were kissing in a hundred different places, and her senses were flooded with new sensations and old memories. When she kissed her, their souls melted into each other in a melody older than time itself.

Laying there in the arms of the love of her life Kamilah knew that there was a point to everything she’d gone through, nothing in her life was a coincidence. She felt it down to her bones. She hadn’t known what that point was for the longest time, but everything she’d had, and everything she’d lost, and everything she’d felt and done — it had all meant something. It was the reason she was laying there beneath the stars in the arms of the woman she loved. It all seemed so inexplicably clear to her. 

She thought back to her last sunrise in Egypt. That one ancient morning when she was not yet a vampire and fighting for her country. She had felt her last sunrise on the banks of the Nile and she remembered it completely down to the finest of details; how the orange and gold light had sparkled on the rippling water, how she’d had to squint and shield her eyes in order to see clearly. Yet she didn’t remember any sunrise that had come before it — but laying there in Anastasia’s arms she felt that beautiful dawn breaking once more. She finally remembered how it felt to be kissed by the sun without being scalded by the glory of its light.

\- fin.


End file.
